My Aunt always collected coins that she found in circulation. When she passed away 25 years ago I was given her coin collection. It was what you might expect from coins pulled from circulation, key dates missing, some are very low grade, etc. With silver at such a high price I decided to go through the collection and cash in the common dates and heavily worn coins. In a folder with a few worn Barber dimes was this one Mercury dime. Under the Mercury she had written 1915 S. I thought for sure she must have made a mistake. Looking at the coin it sure looks like a weakly struck 1915. Even under a 8X loupe it looks like 1915. Could this possibly be?? When the weather breaks I will be taking this to a reputable coin dealer for his opinion. In the meantime what are your opinions? I don’t have a great camera or equipment for taking macro photography but here are two pictures of the coin. Sorry I couldn’t produce a better photo. Is this a forgery, error, or what?
It looks like a 1915 but it is actually a 1945. It is actually very common for people to shave off parts of the 4 just to make it look interesting.
Wow, thanks for the quick replies. I was so focused on the 5 that I wasn't paying any attention to the 1 next to it. Now that you kind people have educated me it's obvious that the 4 was altered to look like a 1. Thanks again for the help. You saved me a long trip to the coin shop.
I'd check it against the 1945s to see if the spacing would suggest an alteration of the 4 to a 1. Oops! A few hours late.
Amazing, I've seen 1845 cents turned into 1815's and 1944-D cents and a few other 1940's cents altered into scarce teens, but I've never seen a 1915 Mercury!
